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January 2074 Super Outbreak (Layten)
The January 2074 Super Outbreak was a 3 day period of violent weather that affected much of the southern regions of the United States. Several extremely violent tornadoes also touched down during the super outbreak, taking hundreds of lives, and causing billions of dollars in damages. On January 29, the Storm Prediction Center issued an Extreme Risk, noting with grim realisation that a super outbreak was highly likely to occur that day, which regretfully came to light a few hours later.This page will document the outbreak as it happened. Synopsis In the days leading up to the outbreak, the storm Prediction center had a Day 2 High Risk in place for January 28, and a day 3 High Risk was in place for January 29, noting that a particularly violent in nature trough of low pressure was expected to collide with not only it's associated frontal systems, but the Jet Stream and a dryline, which would allow violent thunderstorms to be able to develop over the next 3 days. With the risk for extremely violent, long tracked tornadoes in the forecast, all the forecast offices in the affected areas were put on high alert in preparation for the event. Early on Jan. 28, the SPC had issued a HIGH Risk due to a broad shortwave trough and powerful surface low pressure that brought in a significant amount of gulf moisture, abundant dry cold air from central TX. This formed a sweeping cold front with strong convergence of flow in western LA. This coupled with the strong, moist, inflow jet from the gulf to the the south and strong upper level SW winds presented a very volitile atmosphere, as the colder air from the north capped the extremely boyant moist surface level air. This extreme boyancy resulted in SFCAPE values up to 3000 J/kg, with MLCAPE around 2500 J/kg. At the same time, Helecity of 500 m2/s2 as a result of the strong surface-level to upper-level winds and signigicant turning with height. This presented a dynamic setup that would provide storms with the potential to be very long tracked and violent, though conditions deteriorated further east due to the strong capping from the colder upper and mid-level air normally present mid-winter, and much weaker gulf inflow resulting in much lower CAPE values and Helicity. They also noted that "long lived, possibly violent" tornadoes were likely. As the trough collided with a front and dryline, a High Risk of severe weather was kept in place for the Day 2 risk area, and the Moderate Risk was extended slightly into central Mississippi, as stronger tornadoes were expected to move into a region further eastwards than initially expected the day before. As atmospheric instability increased throughout the day, tornadoes began touching down by 0900 local time, with stronger tornadoes beginning to touch down around midday local time, when a 45% risk for tornadoes was issued by the storm Prediction Center as a significant tornado outbreak was realised to already be in progress at that time. As tornadoes raked the US Gulf Coast, several of these would go onto claim several lives, including twin EF5 tornadoes that hit several cities in Louisiana and Mississippi, killing at least 300 people. Category:Super Outbreaks Category:Tornadoes Category:Outbreaks